Orig­i­nal source pub­li­ca­tion: de Moura, F. L. and F. de Sá-Soares (2021). Devis­ing Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems and Tech­nol­ogy Evo­lu­tion­ary Paths with IT-CMF. IADIS Inter­na­tional Jour­nal on Com­puter Sci­ence and Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems 16(1), 63–80.
The final pub­li­ca­tion is avail­able here.

Devis­ing Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems and Tech­nol­ogy Evo­lu­tion­ary Paths with IT-CMF

Fábio Longo de Moura and Fil­ipe de Sá-Soares

Cen­tro ALGO­RITMI—Uni­ver­sity of Minho, Por­tu­gal

1. Introduction

Improv­ing busi­ness per­for­mance, or even main­tain­ing the com­pet­i­tive poten­tial, is a daily and con­stant chal­lenge for an enter­prise. To strength its posi­tion in the mar­ket, an orga­ni­za­tion needs to change cer­tain char­ac­ter­is­tics to a dif­fer­ent state while pre­serv­ing those char­ac­ter­is­tics that meet desir­able para­me­ters [Busi­ness Dic­tio­nary 2012]. This requires man­agers to devise a path to be fol­lowed by the orga­ni­za­tion towards defined goals. To best sup­port their deci­sions, man­agers need infor­ma­tion about the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion and alter­na­tive options. Thus, Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems and Tech­nol­ogy (IST) play a cen­tral role in orga­ni­za­tions as fun­da­men­tal resources to the syn­the­sis of infor­ma­tion.

Pep­pard and Ward [2004] iden­ti­fied three dif­fer­ent eras of evo­lu­tion for orga­ni­za­tions, con­cern­ing their exploita­tion of IST, namely Data Pro­cess­ing, Man­age­ment Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems, and Strate­gic Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems. These ages pre­sented dis­tinct chal­lenges for the evo­lu­tion of orga­ni­za­tions, which have been cap­tured in var­i­ous IST mod­els. Such mod­els depicted sce­nar­ios that might be faced by orga­ni­za­tions and sug­gested paths for their evo­lu­tion in the use of IST, with the expec­ta­tion of achiev­ing suc­cess in dif­fer­ent aspects of the orga­ni­za­tion’s oper­at­ing envi­ron­ment. As com­plex­ity increased inside and out­side orga­ni­za­tions, and the amount of avail­able infor­ma­tion surged, orga­ni­za­tions expe­ri­enced a greater depen­dence on IST, which imposed a stronger need for bet­ter man­age­ment of their infor­ma­tion-related resources.

To help orga­ni­za­tions respond to this infor­ma­tion man­age­ment chal­lenge, new evo­lu­tion mod­els and matu­rity mod­els that for­mu­late rela­tion­ships between IST and orga­ni­za­tions emerged. One of the lat­est mod­els is the Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­ogy Capa­bil­ity Matu­rity Frame­work (IT-CMF). The design of the IT-CMF reflects the demand for dif­fer­en­ti­ated ana­lyzes about the pos­si­bil­i­ties of improv­ing orga­ni­za­tions by the exploita­tion of IST. The frame­work indi­cates knowl­edge and skills that an orga­ni­za­tion should hold in order to man­age effi­ciently and effec­tively the orga­ni­za­tion’s IST func­tion [Duarte and da Silva 2013]. Accord­ing to the pro­vi­sions of the IT-CMF [IVI 2016], it is pos­si­ble to carry out diag­nos­tic and in-depth analy­sis for each of the 36 man­age­ment areas that make up the frame­work. The frame­work also points out rela­tion­ships between man­age­ment areas and how improve­ments in one area may con­trib­ute to improve­ments in other areas.The orga­ni­za­tion that wishes to evolve, based on new demands or on some fac­tor that influ­ences the alter­ation of any of its char­ac­ter­is­tics, should con­sider evo­lu­tion paths that may enhance cer­tain man­age­ment areas that make up the IT-CMF, with the prospect of ris­ing its busi­ness per­for­mance. How­ever, there may be alter­na­tive paths to choose from, tak­ing into account not only the objec­tives estab­lished for the areas of IT-CMF, but also con­sid­er­ing the rela­tion­ship between the areas. Given the inter­de­pen­dences between the 36 man­age­ment areas of IT-CMF, orga­ni­za­tions may face a com­plex task iden­ti­fy­ing and mak­ing sense of dif­fer­ent evo­lu­tion paths. From this obser­va­tion stemmed the moti­va­tion to carry out this study. Faced with this chal­lenge, the research ques­tion that this paper aims to answer is: What is the best evo­lu­tion­ary path that an orga­ni­za­tion may fol­low to improve its IST capa­bil­ity, in the con­text of using the IT-CMF?

To facil­i­tate the selec­tion of evo­lu­tion­ary paths by orga­ni­za­tions through bet­ter use of IST, we con­ducted a net­work analy­sis of IT-CMF, resort­ing to Graph The­ory in order to make explicit the inter­re­la­tion­ships, scope, and pos­si­bil­i­ties when pri­or­i­tiz­ing improve­ments in one or more areas of IST in an orga­ni­za­tion. The com­bi­na­tion of IT-CMF with Graph The­ory also allows man­agers more clar­ity in deci­sion mak­ing, in addi­tion to greater assertive­ness and effi­ciency in the deploy­ment of resources for the evo­lu­tion of orga­ni­za­tions through IST.

The fol­low­ing sec­tion cov­ers the lit­er­a­ture review, set­ting the stage for a new way to apply IT-CMF accord­ing to the speci­fici­ties of each orga­ni­za­tion. After the lit­er­a­ture review, this work is com­posed of two other sec­tions, related to Graph The­ory and to the propo­si­tion of using Graph The­ory to per­form a net­work analy­sis of IT-CMF, with the aim of improv­ing the appli­ca­tion of IST orga­ni­za­tional resources and high­light dif­fer­ent views about the rel­e­vance of each area of IT-CMF. At the end of the paper, con­clu­sions are drawn and future work involv­ing the appli­ca­tion of this pro­posal is advanced.

2. Literature Review

In this sec­tion, orga­ni­za­tional suc­cess and its mea­sure­ment are dis­cussed, tak­ing into account the role that IST play both for that end and in that task. Then, evo­lu­tion and matu­rity mod­els for the exploita­tion and man­age­ment of orga­ni­za­tion’s IST are briefly reviewed. After­wards, the struc­ture of IT-CMF and the rela­tion­ship between the areas com­pos­ing this frame­work are put into per­spec­tive.

2.1 Organizational Success

The busi­ness prac­tices of orga­ni­za­tions must keep up with con­stant changes, as prac­tices that are known to be suc­cess­ful in the past may not indi­cate suc­cess in the future [Fong 2010], as illus­trated by what hap­pened to com­pa­nies with pre­dom­i­nant mar­ket share in the recent past, such as Kodak, Block­buster, and Black­Berry. Pre­vi­ously, Kodak had an 80% mar­ket share for cam­era film, cou­pled with 85% of cam­eras sold on the mar­ket. Block­buster, once one of the best-known brands in the United States of Amer­ica, decided to main­tain the busi­ness model that led it to suc­cess, end­ing up declar­ing bank­ruptcy after 25 years of exis­tence. Besides not being able to keep up with the trans­for­ma­tion that was tak­ing place in its envi­ron­ment, Block­buster chose to main­tain the orga­ni­za­tional para­me­ters and deci­sions that have led to suc­cess in the past, but which proved to be inad­e­quate in the face of com­pe­ti­tion. On the other hand, Black­Berry, which between 2000 and 2010 dom­i­nated the mobile device mar­ket, being rec­og­nized for the con­stant inno­va­tion in its prod­ucts, was unable to keep its oper­at­ing sys­tem com­pet­i­tive in the face of new com­peti­tors iOS and Android. In 2017 it held only 0.01% of mar­ket share, and today, despite still man­u­fac­tur­ing and sell­ing smart­phones, its core busi­ness is in the field of secu­rity and Inter­net of Things (IoT).

The mea­sure­ment of the orga­ni­za­tion’s suc­cess should not be sta­tic and should not be based on sim­plis­tic and iso­lated mea­sures. A tool widely used to mea­sure the suc­cess of orga­ni­za­tions is the Bal­anced Score­card (BSC) [Kaplan and Nor­ton 1992]. BSC aims to over­come weak­nesses of indi­ca­tors such as Return over Invest­ment (ROI) and Earn­ing per Share (EPS), not­ing that these are not suf­fi­cient indi­ca­tors for con­tin­u­ous improve­ment and inno­va­tion. The BSC authors advo­cate the inte­gra­tion of com­ple­men­tary indi­ca­tors to assist in the eval­u­a­tion of the suc­cess of the orga­ni­za­tion, tak­ing into account the:

• Cus­tomer per­spec­tive: It refers to trans­lat­ing the com­pany’s mis­sion into mea­sures that directly affect the cus­tomer, such as time, per­for­mance and ser­vice, qual­ity, and cost;

• Inter­nal busi­ness processes per­spec­tive: It refers to meet­ing cus­tomer expec­ta­tions, result­ing in their sat­is­fac­tion. Some fac­tors are related to the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the com­pany’s com­pe­ten­cies and the tech­nolo­gies in use;

• Learn­ing and growth per­spec­tive: It involves iden­ti­fy­ing the main para­me­ters that demon­strate com­pet­i­tive suc­cess. It must be con­stantly updated to force the con­tin­u­ous improve­ment of the orga­ni­za­tion’s prod­ucts and processes;

• Finan­cial per­spec­tive: Regard­ing finan­cial goals (prof­itabil­ity, growth, and share­holder value), the orga­ni­za­tion’s strat­egy is eval­u­ated to prove its effec­tive­ness.

When com­pos­ing a set of indi­ca­tors of the orga­ni­za­tion’s suc­cess, it makes sense to con­sider the exter­nal envi­ron­ment, in order to com­pare the orga­ni­za­tion with its the com­peti­tors [Neely et al. 2005]. One way to con­sider the exter­nal envi­ron­ment is to add the fol­low­ing indi­ca­tor:

• Com­peti­tor per­spec­tive: What are our com­peti­tors doing? The need to fol­low what com­peti­tors are doing had already been pointed out by [Hamel and Pra­ha­lad 1994], not­ing that the orga­ni­za­tion’s sur­vival is con­di­tioned on iden­ti­fy­ing the needs of cus­tomers in the future, so to cre­ate new oppor­tu­ni­ties and dom­i­nate emerg­ing ones.

Con­sid­er­ing another orga­ni­za­tional suc­cess approach, pro­posed by Sink [1985], there are dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives to mea­sure the suc­cess of the orga­ni­za­tion, which include analy­sis of prod­uct qual­ity, cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion, capac­ity for inno­va­tion, qual­ity of work, employee reten­tion, the per­ceived value of goods and ser­vices, oper­a­tional effi­ciency and social respon­si­bil­ity.

The suc­cess of an orga­ni­za­tion depends on its sus­tain­abil­ity and growth, requir­ing the orches­tra­tion of very dif­fer­ent tasks, such as seg­ment iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and mar­ket niche, devel­op­ment of prod­ucts and ser­vices, acqui­si­tion of resources, devel­op­ment of oper­at­ing sys­tems, devel­op­ment of man­age­ment sys­tems, and devel­op­ment of cor­po­rate cul­ture [Flamholtz and Akse­hirli 2000]. Flamholtz and Akse­hirli sug­gest a set of tasks that must be done in suc­cess­ful orga­ni­za­tions, divided into six lev­els, rep­re­sented in a pyra­mid, as shown in Fig­ure 1. The base of the pyra­mid encom­passes the essen­tials for suc­cess­ful orga­ni­za­tions, while the high­est lev­els con­tain attrib­utes that form the orga­ni­za­tion’s infra­struc­ture, respon­si­ble for lim­it­ing the pos­si­bil­ity of imi­ta­tion by com­peti­tors.

Fig­ure 1: Pyra­mid of Orga­ni­za­tional Devel­op­ment: The Six Key Build­ing Blocks of Suc­cess­ful Orga­ni­za­tions
Source: [Flamholtz and Akse­hirli 2000]

Along­side what was argued by Flamholtz and Akse­hirli [2000], we may also con­sider the the­ory pro­posed by Bar­ney [1991], stat­ing that the orga­ni­za­tion’s resources and capa­bil­i­ties are what will make it pos­si­ble to dif­fer­en­ti­ate itself from com­peti­tors. Bar­ney also men­tions the pos­si­bil­ity of orga­ni­za­tions being het­ero­ge­neous con­cern­ing their resources. This pro­posal was named Resource-Based The­ory (RBT), to which other authors later used in their stud­ies. Pep­pard and Ward [2004], for exam­ple, note that RBT con­sid­ers the accu­mu­la­tion and implan­ta­tion of resources that match the idio­syn­cratic (unique) resources of pro­pri­etary assets and pro­vide the source of sus­tain­able com­pet­i­tive advan­tage. This per­spec­tive con­trasts with the lev­els of the orga­ni­za­tional devel­op­ment pyra­mid pro­posed by Flamholtz and Akse­hirli [2000], specif­i­cally at the higher lev­els of the pyra­mid, which must be pri­or­i­tized after the orga­ni­za­tion has already per­formed the tasks form­ing the lower lev­els of the pyra­mid.

As input to the mea­sure­ment of the level of suc­cess, which in itself has become more demand­ing since it has to con­sider a mul­ti­tude of para­me­ters [Cur­ley 2008], as instru­ments to know what is hap­pen­ing, or as prod­ucts or ser­vices by them­selves, IST play a fun­da­men­tal role in the suc­cess of orga­ni­za­tions. It is not sur­pris­ing, there­fore, the emer­gence of mod­els to guide the exploita­tion and man­age­ment of orga­ni­za­tions’ IST.

2.2 Evolution and Maturity Models

The obser­va­tion of changes in the char­ac­ter­is­tics of orga­ni­za­tions, which occurred over sev­eral decades, led to the adop­tion of the con­cepts of evo­lu­tion and matu­rity in order to envi­sion the progress of an orga­ni­za­tion and its sophis­ti­ca­tion regard­ing the use of IST. Ini­tially approached by Nolan [Gib­son and Nolan 1974; Nolan 1973, 1979], the con­cept of evo­lu­tion was present in sev­eral mod­els that aimed to guide the progress of orga­ni­za­tions in using IST.

Evo­lu­tion, applied to the orga­ni­za­tional con­text, refers to the process of change that the orga­ni­za­tion expe­ri­ences over time, involv­ing the alter­ation of one or more char­ac­ter­is­tics, and that may be marked by false starts and present dif­fer­ent direc­tions, while hop­ing to main­tain what is believed to be work­ing [Busi­ness Dic­tio­nary 2012].

Later, the con­cept of matu­rity was used, replac­ing the con­cept of evo­lu­tion, as a means to struc­ture the mod­els describ­ing the pro­gres­sion in the use of IST. This change reflects a new approach adopted in the mod­els in what con­cerns the way to eval­u­ate the orga­ni­za­tion. While mod­els of evo­lu­tion only clas­sify the orga­ni­za­tion in a stage, matu­rity mod­els empha­size the mea­sure­ment of the qual­ity of the rela­tion­ship between the orga­ni­za­tion and IST, con­tem­plat­ing fac­tors that directly or indi­rectly influ­ence this rela­tion­ship, and sug­gest­ing actions for its improve­ment, in order to raise the evo­lu­tion­ary stage of the orga­ni­za­tion. The fac­tors that help to assess the evo­lu­tion­ary stage of orga­ni­za­tions in what con­cerns IST, are usu­ally called vari­ables, and guide orga­ni­za­tions in answer­ing the fol­low­ing ques­tions: Where are we?, Where are we going?, and What will we do to get there? [San­tos and Valdesuso 1985].

Tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ments place con­tin­ued pres­sure on orga­ni­za­tions, forc­ing them to ques­tion their cur­rent and future use of IST. These devel­op­ments lead to the accel­er­ated obso­les­cence of mod­els designed to sup­port the evo­lu­tion­ary or matur­ing process of orga­ni­za­tions regard­ing their use of IST, as fac­tors that were pre­vi­ously rel­e­vant may no longer make sense. The plethora of pos­si­bil­i­ties for the progress of orga­ni­za­tions makes the pro­posal of direc­tions that unveil evo­lu­tion­ary paths a chal­leng­ing endeav­our. Indeed, the scope of most of the mod­els designed so far proved to be lim­ited due to the numer­ous pos­si­bil­i­ties pro­vided by the use of IST. Ergo, there is a need for a holis­tic approach to extract value from IST, that pays atten­tion to dif­fer­ent sec­tors of the orga­ni­za­tion, their spe­cific demands, and rela­tion­ships, mak­ing explicit the influ­ences and depen­den­cies exist­ing between them.

2.3 IT-CMF

Based on var­i­ous sci­en­tific con­tri­bu­tions pro­duced over decades of stud­ies on the rela­tion­ship between orga­ni­za­tions and IST, the IT-CMF appears as a com­pos­ite of matu­rity mod­els, not lim­ited to ana­lyz­ing a spe­cific con­text. The frame­work archi­tec­ture includes 36 con­texts for analy­sis, each with a matu­rity model that indi­cates a pos­si­ble path to be taken by the

orga­ni­za­tion that seeks to improve its rela­tion­ship with IST in a man­age­ment area [Car­cary et al. 2015]. Each IT-CMF matu­rity model is com­posed of five evo­lu­tion­ary stages, and the areas cov­ered by the frame­work have guid­ing ques­tions to assess the level of matu­rity, guide­lines for the evo­lu­tion of the area, typ­i­cal chal­lenges for the intended evo­lu­tion, as well as actions nec­es­sary to be per­formed by those respon­si­ble for the evo­lu­tion of the orga­ni­za­tion. The areas, called Crit­i­cal Capa­bil­i­ties (CC), are orga­nized into four large groups, called Macro Capa­bil­i­ties (MC). These groups bring together areas that have equiv­a­lent objec­tives, which accord­ing to the pro­vi­sions of IVI [2016], are:

• Man­ag­ing IT like a busi­ness (MC1): Com­posed of 14 CCs, it pro­poses to change the vision of how IT is con­sid­ered, migrat­ing from a cost cen­ter to a value cen­ter view, offer­ing solu­tions to cus­tomers and exist­ing prob­lems in the busi­ness;

• Man­ag­ing the IT bud­get (MC2): Formed by 4 CCs, it includes chal­lenges related to the cost of IT, such as unplanned costs, main­te­nance of legacy sys­tems, and the dif­fi­culty of strate­gi­cally invest­ing in new tech­nolo­gies;

• Man­ag­ing the IT capa­bil­ity (MC3): It cov­ers 15 CCs and refers to the main­te­nance of the ser­vices pro­vided by the IT func­tion and the devel­op­ment of new ser­vices, stim­u­lat­ing inno­va­tion in the orga­ni­za­tional envi­ron­ment through ser­vices and solu­tions pro­vided by IT; and

• Man­ag­ing IT for busi­ness value (MC4): It involves 3 CCs, which aim to ensure that IT invest­ments will enable busi­ness ben­e­fits, fos­ter­ing the view that IT projects are not tech­nol­ogy projects, but projects that gen­er­ate busi­ness value.

The process of diag­nos­ing the nec­es­sary improve­ments for the orga­ni­za­tion, which is also included in the frame­work archi­tec­ture, will indi­cate a set of CCs that should be improved, accord­ing to the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion of the orga­ni­za­tion and its busi­ness objec­tives. The advan­tages for the Chief Infor­ma­tion Offi­cer (CIO), through diag­no­sis and improve­ments in the orga­ni­za­tion using the IT-CMF, are a focus on busi­ness value, instead of cost; sus­tain­able IT; an empha­sis placed not on value gen­er­ated by cost, but on opti­mized value, and a view of IT as an orga­ni­za­tion’s core com­pe­tence.

When using the IT-CMF, it is pos­si­ble to analyse the orga­ni­za­tion in two dif­fer­ent ways, namely, diag­nos­tic analy­sis and in-depth analy­sis, with the lat­ter adding to the diag­no­sis the def­i­n­i­tion of an action plan to improve the crit­i­cal capa­bil­i­ties for the analysed orga­ni­za­tion. Not being manda­tory, the IT-CMF can serve as a guid­ing com­pass for man­agers in the daily chal­lenges of the orga­ni­za­tion [Cur­ley and Ken­neally 2011]. It is stressed, through IT-CMF, the pos­si­bil­ity of the orga­ni­za­tion being expe­ri­enc­ing an evo­lu­tion­ary process, which may con­tain char­ac­ter­is­tics of two lev­els of matu­rity.

The analy­sis of the rela­tion­ships between the CCs reveals how dif­fer­ent CCs may con­trib­ute for the improve­ment of the orga­ni­za­tional use of IST. Many of the con­tri­bu­tions may come from iso­lated actions, how­ever, they may have com­pre­hen­sive results. The rela­tion­ships between the 36 CCs that make up the IT-CMF involve 230 con­tri­bu­tions, either between CCs from the same MC or between CCs from dif­fer­ent MCs, as shown in Table 1. Regard­ing the rela­tion­ships between the CCs and the con­duc­tion of the orga­ni­za­tion’s in-depth diag­no­sis, it becomes pos­si­ble to pri­or­i­tize improve­ments of spe­cific CCs, focus­ing on the devel­op­ment and imple­men­ta­tion of improve­ments in the sys­temic rela­tion­ships that emerge from the var­i­ous CCs. The IT-CMF is, there­fore, a prac­ti­cal, action-ori­ented tool, direct­ing the orga­ni­za­tion towards busi­ness inno­va­tion and dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion through IST as part of a process of max­i­miz­ing the CCs, to expand the orga­ni­za­tion; s busi­ness, with IST being a strate­gic resource and sup­port in the process of inno­va­tion and change [Car­cary et al. 2015]. Con­sid­er­ing the sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of rela­tion­ships between the CCs, the pri­or­i­ti­za­tion of CCs on the path to be fol­lowed for improv­ing areas of the orga­ni­za­tion becomes a com­plex task. There­fore, it is nec­es­sary to under­stand bet­ter such rela­tion­ships, specif­i­cally regard­ing the con­tri­bu­tions pro­vided and received by each CC, in order to assist man­agers in the selec­tion of the best evo­lu­tion­ary path to fol­low. This argu­ment is related to the pur­pose of IT-CMF–to do more with less–mak­ing it pos­si­ble to add value to the busi­ness through an assertive invest­ment in IST.

Accord­ing to the data pro­vided in Table 1, the rel­e­vance of MC1 is patent, both in the con­tri­bu­tions pro­vided by the CCs that com­pose it and in the con­tri­bu­tions received by their CCs. On the other hand, there is a lower weight of the CCs of MC2, regard­ing the con­tri­bu­tion to the other CCs, as well as the con­tri­bu­tions received by the CCs that make up MC4. To enable a bet­ter rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the CCs, visu­ally indi­cat­ing the rela­tion­ships between them and mak­ing clear their con­tri­bu­tion to improve­ment actions, we resort to Graph The­ory, using rep­re­sen­ta­tions as well as apply­ing algo­rithms on the data com­piled from IT-CMF. The appli­ca­tion of algo­rithms enables the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of com­mu­ni­ties of CCs that show greater prox­im­ity, the recog­ni­tion of CCs with greater rel­e­vance in the frame­work, either in gen­eral or in the con­tri­bu­tions received or pro­vided, as well as unveil­ing the affected CCs through the improve­ments made in a sin­gle CC.

Table 1: Con­tri­bu­tions between IT-CMF MCs

We argue that Graph The­ory applied to the IT-CMF will assist in the pro­vi­sion of direc­tions for the evo­lu­tion of the orga­ni­za­tion, putting into per­spec­tive the strengths and weak­nesses of the orga­ni­za­tion to its strate­gic goals. The plan­ning of actions to be per­formed can also be sup­ported by the rep­re­sen­ta­tions elab­o­rated using the con­cept of graphs, namely by defin­ing the evo­lu­tion­ary path to be fol­lowed, accord­ing to the CCs involved. The con­struc­tion of the graph rep­re­sen­ta­tions that will appear later in the paper were made using the appli­ca­tion Gephi (ver­sion 0.9.2).

3. Graph Theory

Graph The­ory is a branch of math­e­mat­ics con­cerned with the study of struc­tures–graphs–that model rela­tion­ships between objects. A graph is a rep­re­sen­ta­tion formed by a set of points (ver­tices) and con­nec­tions between points (edges), which can be used to rep­re­sent dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tions in the real world [Bondy and Murty 1976]. The his­tory of Graph The­ory began in 1736, in the famous dilemma of the Königs­berg bridges. In this dilemma, the seven bridges (edges) and four regions (nodes) of the city of Königs­berg, cut by the river Pregel, were involved [Gold­barg and Gold­barg 2012]. Fig­ure 2(A), devel­oped by Rouse Ball [Gross and Yellen 2003], exem­pli­fies the dilemma men­tioned when he called the con­cept of graph. This exam­ple came from the chal­lenge of the Königs­berg pop­u­la­tion, which was to walk through all regions of the city with­out cross­ing the same bridge more than once.

One of the most used exam­ples for graphs is about rep­re­sent­ing peo­ple, with lines mod­el­ing the rela­tion­ship between peo­ple, thus being able to demon­strate large con­cen­tra­tions and dis­place­ments on a map. Such a sce­nario is of great rel­e­vance for macro analy­sis, such as those related to the spread of dis­eases in the world. A cur­rent case of appli­ca­tion is the evo­lu­tion of the pan­demic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus (COVID-19). When trav­el­ing, peo­ple end up trans­port­ing the virus to their local­i­ties, but pass­ing by large points of con­cen­tra­tion of peo­ple, such as large air­ports (hubs).

Besides being heav­ily used for mod­el­ing and ana­lyz­ing maps, another exam­ple of the appli­ca­tion of Graph The­ory is to chess games, with each piece hav­ing a spe­cific graph that indi­cates its dis­place­ment. The Queen, for instance, is the piece that has the great­est num­ber of oppor­tu­ni­ties in its dis­place­ment on the board and may have up to eight pos­si­ble edges and sev­eral ver­tices for its final posi­tion on the board, as shown in Fig­ure 2(B). The queen is at the cen­ter of the graph, indi­cated by the filled black dot, hav­ing 25 ver­tices as poten­tial final posi­tions, depend­ing on whether there is an imped­i­ment to dis­place­ment, caused by any other piece of the board.

Fig­ure 2: Rep­re­sen­ta­tions of the Use of Graphs

These are just a few exam­ples of the use of graphs, from a myr­iad of appli­ca­tions in chem­istry, oper­a­tions research, social sci­ences, social media, and com­puter sci­ence, to name a few. In this work, graphs will be used to rep­re­sent the CCs and MCs of IT-CMF, to clar­ify how CCs are related and how they can indi­cate paths for the evo­lu­tion of orga­ni­za­tions, in what con­cerns IST. The path to fol­low is based on the diag­no­sis of the improve­ments to be made, accord­ing to the objec­tives defined for the orga­ni­za­tion. In other words, the graph makes clear a sequence of actions related to the var­i­ous CCs that make up the IT-CMF, con­sid­er­ing the improve­ments iden­ti­fied as nec­es­sary by the orga­ni­za­tion. It may also indi­cate required routes that pave the way for the evo­lu­tion­ary path sought by the orga­ni­za­tion, that is, in order to fol­low the selected path, it might prove essen­tial to mobi­lize before­hand cer­tain resources that improve spe­cific areas of the orga­ni­za­tion on which that path is depen­dent.

4. A Network Analysis of IT-CMF

The use of graphs to assist in the study of var­i­ous areas of knowl­edge, as already men­tioned, is not new. In this work, given the mul­ti­ple alter­na­tive paths avail­able to the orga­ni­za­tion to improve its exploita­tion of IST, the use of Graph The­ory proved a viable means to address two issues. The first was the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of alter­na­tive evo­lu­tion­ary paths that an orga­ni­za­tion may con­sider. The sec­ond was the def­i­n­i­tion of a path that pri­or­i­tizes the improve­ments to make in the orga­ni­za­tion, con­sid­er­ing the rela­tion­ships between the areas of the IT-CMF as shown in Table 1.

Fig­ure 3 rep­re­sents the IT-CMF, with­out apply­ing any Gephi resources to dif­fer­en­ti­ate the CCs, except using spe­cific col­ora­tion for the CCs, accord­ing to the MCs to which they belong. The only resource applied refers to the con­tri­bu­tions pro­vided between the CCs, rep­re­sented by the arrows. Accord­ing to the direc­tion indi­cated by the arrows (← or →), the pic­ture depicts how the con­tri­bu­tion from one CC to another CC occurs. When­ever the arrow points to both sides (↔), it means that there is a mutual con­tri­bu­tion between the involved CCs.

Fig­ure 3: IT-CMF Crit­i­cal Capa­bil­i­ties

Hence, it became pos­si­ble to ana­lyze all the CCs that make up the frame­work, as depicted in Fig­ure 3, as well as a sub­set of CCs, such as those that make up each MC, as shown in Fig­ure 4. In the fig­ures, CCs are iden­ti­fied by a numeral and an abbre­vi­a­tion in square brack­ets (the mean­ing of each abbre­vi­a­tion is pro­vided in Appen­dix A).

In both Fig­ures 3 and 4, CCs are arranged fol­low­ing the dis­tri­bu­tion pro­posed by the Force Atlas 2 algo­rithm. In Fig­ure 4, the CCs are dimen­sioned accord­ing to their degree (cor­re­spond­ing to the inputs and out­puts of each node–CC). The color of each node cor­re­sponds to the appli­ca­tion of the Heat Map, with an empha­sis on the CC with the high­est degree in the analy­sis per­formed, except for MC2. This excep­tion results from CCs BOP(16) and FF(17) hav­ing the same degree, so they are dimen­sioned and col­ored based on their cen­tral­ity.

The analy­sis of Fig­ure 4 sug­gests that the CC SP (14) has great rel­e­vance in the MC to which it belongs, and this rel­e­vance is rein­forced when con­sid­er­ing Fig­ure 5, which, like Fig­ure 4, scales the CCs accord­ing to their grade (input and out­put). It is inter­est­ing to note the dif­fer­ence in the rel­e­vance of some CCs, con­cern­ing their con­tri­bu­tion to their MC and to the entire IT-CMF. When look­ing at MC1 (Fig­ure 4), for exam­ple, the CCs EIM (06) and IM (08) have low rel­e­vance, while for the frame­work (Fig­ure 5) their rel­e­vance is vis­i­bly higher.

Fig­ure 4: IT-CMF MCs and their CCs

Another behav­ior that deserves to be high­lighted is the rel­e­vance of the CCs that make up the MC2. When analysed together with the other CCs in the frame­work, the inver­sion of the rel­e­vance of the CCs is observed when con­sid­er­ing their degree (input and out­put) in the graph. The CC PPP (18) is the least rel­e­vant in the MC that belongs to, how­ever, com­pared to the other MC2 CCs (cf. Fig­ure 5), it is the MC2 CC with the great­est rel­e­vance, fol­lowed by the CC FF (17), the sec­ond with less rel­e­vance in MC2. Regard­ing the CCs that make up the MC3, the rel­e­vance of each one, accord­ing to their input and out­put degree, both for the MC and to the entire frame­work, is equiv­a­lent. The graphs also reveal that CC SP(14) has great rel­e­vance in the frame­work, as well as for the MC in which it is located. It is note­wor­thy that CCs SRP(28) and SD(29) also reflect an equiv­a­lent degree of impor­tance for the MC, but in the global frame­work they are less impor­tant. In this case, con­sid­er­ing the need to improve CCs that belong to MC2 and MC4, per­haps the best path does not involve these CCs, since it offers only one con­tri­bu­tion to MC2 and receives only one con­tri­bu­tion from MC4.

Fig­ure 5: IT-CMF CC Com­mu­ni­ties

Con­cern­ing the con­tri­bu­tions between CCs, CC CAM(19) does not co-par­tic­i­pate in the MC in which it is located, exer­cis­ing rela­tions in large part with the CCs of MC1 (seven CCs) and MC3 (one CC). This fact strength­ens and clar­i­fies the essence of the frame­work, namely that the rela­tion­ships between dif­fer­ent sec­tors enable the orga­ni­za­tion to evolve. Thus, although CC CAM(19) works to raise the qual­ity of MC3, its improve­ment will also facil­i­tate improve­ments intended for MC1 and MC3.

Fig­ure 5 stresses this state­ment, pre­sent­ing another point of view on the IT-CMF CCs. In the Fig­ure, the CCs are pre­sented in col­ors that rep­re­sent their com­mu­ni­ties, ren­der­ing the CCs that have the strongest rela­tion­ship. This result was obtained through the dis­tri­bu­tion using Force Atlas 2 algo­rithm and the cal­cu­la­tion of Mod­u­lar­ity (0.238). It is noted, there­fore, the exis­tence of dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties from the cor­re­spond­ing orga­ni­za­tion with the MCs (pre­sented in Fig­ure 6), empha­siz­ing again the argu­ment that although each CC has a main objec­tive, jus­ti­fy­ing its clas­si­fi­ca­tion in an MC, its evo­lu­tion may con­trib­ute to the improve­ment of other area of the orga­ni­za­tion. An addi­tional find­ing ema­nat­ing from Fig­ure 6 is that all the CCs of MC2 and MC4 per­tain to the same com­mu­nity. This high­lights the mutual col­lab­o­ra­tions that occur between the CCs of these two MCs.

Fig­ure 6: Orga­ni­za­tion of CCs Com­mu­ni­ties accord­ing to MCs

Still regard­ing the com­mu­ni­ties that were iden­ti­fied, as a con­se­quence of the strong rela­tion­ship between MC2 and MC4, there is also a strong rela­tion­ship between the CCs of MC1 and MC3, which are the ones with the high­est num­ber of CCs in the frame­work, respec­tively 14 and 15 CCs. How­ever, there are groups of CCs with greater con­nec­tiv­ity, which led to the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of three other com­mu­ni­ties of CCs in the graph.

Fig­ure 7: Input and Out­put Degree Com­par­i­son of CCs

Another rep­re­sen­ta­tion derived from Fig­ure 5 and shown in Fig­ure 7 is the scal­ing of the nodes accord­ing to their degree, divid­ing it into two fig­ures, one to rep­re­sent the degree of inputs (A) and the other to rep­re­sent the degree of out­puts (B). This rep­re­sen­ta­tion assists to the def­i­n­i­tion of paths to be fol­lowed to carry out activ­i­ties related to the CCs, con­sid­er­ing what should be pri­or­i­tized in an evo­lu­tion­ary path of the orga­ni­za­tion. For the sake of illus­tra­tion, con­sider the fol­low­ing sce­nario: let us imag­ine that man­agers iden­tify as nec­es­sary to make improve­ments in CC BPM(03), belong­ing to MC1. Know­ing that BPM is part of a com­mu­nity (result­ing from the mod­u­lar­ity of the graph) whose main facil­i­ta­tors are CCs BP(02), CFP(04), SAI(12), SRC(13), and SP(14), it makes sense to con­sider and eval­u­ate the con­tri­bu­tions pro­vided by these CCs, which will help to improve the orga­ni­za­tion’s BPM(03). For exam­ple, CC BP(02) con­trib­utes directly to CC BPM(03) and can assist in its evo­lu­tion. This pos­si­bil­ity of an evo­lu­tion­ary path is rep­re­sented in Fig­ure 8(A). On the other hand, the con­tri­bu­tion pro­vided by BPM(03) to the other CCs should also be con­sid­ered, regard­ing the rel­e­vance of these CCs to the orga­ni­za­tion. In this case, con­tri­bu­tions result­ing from improve­ments made in the con­text of BPM(03) are directed to CCs ODP(10), SAI(12), SRC(13), EAM(20), and SD(29). If these CCs are also con­sid­ered rel­e­vant to the busi­ness, the impor­tance of using resources to improve BPM(03) is even greater. This path pos­si­bil­ity is shown in Fig­ure 8(B).

Fig­ure 8: Improve­ment Pro­pos­als involv­ing BPM(03)

Another impor­tant insight is that CC EAM(20) has a high degree of out­put, con­tribut­ing to twelve other CCs, as shown in Fig­ure 7(B). In another sce­nario, con­sid­er­ing the neces­sity to make improve­ments in some of the areas that make up the IT-CMF, the need for improve­ment in the CC ITG(09) is adopted as an exam­ple. One of the pos­si­bil­i­ties is to con­sider the com­mu­nity in which this CC is located, and, there­fore, work to improve other six CCs, namely: EIM(06), RM(11), EAM(20), ISM(21), PDP(24), and SD(29). In this pro­posal, which is rep­re­sented in Fig­ure 9(A), there would be the strength­en­ing of the desired CC (ITG) through the prox­im­ity of the areas worked. Another pos­si­bil­ity, rep­re­sented in Fig­ure 9(B), is to iden­tify which CCs are sup­pli­ers of improve­ments for the CC in ques­tion, which in this case are four CCs: BP(02), ODP(10), SP(14), and PDP(24). The deci­sion on the way for­ward may be based on the objec­tives of the orga­ni­za­tion or on the fore­cast and avail­abil­ity of resources to improve the CC ITG(09). An assess­ment of the level of matu­rity of the orga­ni­za­tion in the sets of CCs can be an impor­tant fac­tor to assist in the deci­sion, since the strengths and weak­nesses of the orga­ni­za­tion in dif­fer­ent areas can be iden­ti­fied, facil­i­tat­ing the achieve­ment of improve­ments in the desired area. By choos­ing the path that involves the stronger points, in terms of IT-CMF CCs, it is pos­si­ble to estab­lish syn­er­gies at an early stage, involv­ing the CCs with greater strength in the orga­ni­za­tion. Later, the orga­ni­za­tional efforts may expand improve­ments to other areas, lever­ag­ing the results of those syn­er­gies, either by har­ness­ing the strengths diag­nosed or by the improve­ments made in a group of CCs.

Fig­ure 9: Improve­ment Pro­pos­als involv­ing ITG(09)

Con­cern­ing the rel­e­vance of MCs to the frame­work, it is evi­dent that MC1 and MC3, by effi­ciently and effec­tively employ­ing orga­ni­za­tional resources in the evo­lu­tion of their CCs, tend to enable a rad­i­cal change in the orga­ni­za­tion. How­ever, although MC2 and MC4 have sub­stan­tially fewer CCs, when employ­ing orga­ni­za­tional resources to improve these CCs, the con­tri­bu­tions to the other CCs in the frame­work are above the aver­age of the num­ber of con­tri­bu­tions pro­vided by the CCs of MC1 and MC3. Table 2, as a com­ple­ment to Table 1, shows the aver­age of con­tri­bu­tions per CC, tak­ing into account the num­ber of CCs in each MC.

Table 2: Aver­age Con­tri­bu­tions from CCs (Grouped by MCs)

Con­sid­er­ing the con­tri­bu­tions fea­tured in Table 2, one notes that the rela­tion­ship between the CCs of MC1 and MC3 are very strong, as well as the rela­tion­ships that exist inter­nally, that is, between the CCs of MC1 and MC3 them­selves. How­ever, when direct­ing the rela­tion­ship between these MCs and the other smaller MCs, the con­tri­bu­tion is much lower than the con­tri­bu­tions pro­vided by the MCs com­posed of a lower num­ber of CCs. The weak­ness, nev­er­the­less, is part of the inter­nal rela­tions between the CCs, since, com­par­a­tively, the smaller MCs have, on aver­age, fewer inter­nal rela­tions than the most numer­ous MCs. There­fore, when defin­ing an IST improve­ment plan in an orga­ni­za­tion, one must bear in mind the con­tri­bu­tions pro­vided by the smaller MCs, since these MCs may have a more com­pre­hen­sive impact on the poten­tial results, once orga­ni­za­tional resources are prop­erly applied. Indeed, con­sid­er­ing the CCs with the high­est degree in the graph, in MC2 and MC4, respec­tively PPP(18) and BAR(34) (see Fig­ure 4), and also because they are in the same com­mu­nity (see Fig­ure 5), it is advis­able that, even if such CCs are not pri­or­i­tized, the con­tri­bu­tion pro­vided by them needs to be taken into con­sid­er­a­tion, as it is pos­si­ble that the objec­tive to be achieved can be facil­i­tated when atten­tion is paid to these CCs.

To clar­ify the rela­tion­ships and con­tri­bu­tions exist­ing between the CCs of the MCs that make up the IT-CMF, Fig­ure 10 makes a com­par­i­son of the direct rela­tion­ship between the MCs. In Fig­ure 10(A) the thick­ness of the edges (the size of the edge arrow) con­veys, through the direc­tion of the arrow, the con­tri­bu­tion pro­vided from one MC to another. It can be noted,there­fore, the strength of the rela­tion­ship between MC1 and MC3, as pre­vi­ously men­tioned, in addi­tion to also demon­strat­ing the con­nec­tiv­ity of the CCs that make up MC1 and MC3 (as revealed by the self-loops). Fig­ure 10(B) depicts the total con­tri­bu­tions divided by the num­ber of CCs that make up the MC. In this rep­re­sen­ta­tion, it is evi­dent that, in all rela­tion­ships, MC2 and MC4 pro­vide more con­tri­bu­tions to MC1 and MC3 than receive con­tri­bu­tions from these MCs, mak­ing clear the need to pro­vide atten­tion to MC2–Man­ag­ing the IT Bud­get and MC4–Man­ag­ing IT for Busi­ness Value, even though, quan­ti­ta­tively, they are less expres­sive than the other MCs. The CCs that make up MC2 and MC4 can act as great facil­i­ta­tors for improve­ments to be per­formed in dif­fer­ent areas of man­age­ment of the orga­ni­za­tion.

Fig­ure 10: Rela­tions and Con­tri­bu­tions between MCs and CCs

5. Conclusion

In the face of a chal­lenge, it is nec­es­sary to act. To act, the action must be well-founded, that is, be based on ele­ments that sup­port that the action per­formed was iden­ti­fied as the best option for the given moment. The deci­sion for a path to be fol­lowed to make improve­ments in the orga­ni­za­tion needs to be as assertive as pos­si­ble, as many orga­ni­za­tions have no mar­gin for errors, or, even if errors are part of the evo­lu­tion­ary path that the orga­ni­za­tion takes, they are never desir­able. The pro­posal to use graphs as an aid in find­ing the evo­lu­tion­ary paths for the orga­ni­za­tion, which are adapted to its needs, seeks to max­i­mize the use of orga­ni­za­tional resources in the adop­tion and use of IT-CMF.

Con­sid­er­ing that IT-CMF is one of the most robust and mature ref­er­ences in the eval­u­a­tion of the rela­tion­ship between orga­ni­za­tions and IST, it is of great rel­e­vance to explore it, and to present dif­fer­ent points of view for its appli­ca­tion, seek­ing to facil­i­tate the immer­sion of man­agers in the con­tent pro­vided. By con­duct­ing a net­work analy­sis of IT-CMF based on Graph The­ory, it is pos­si­ble to demon­strate, with greater clar­ity, how the man­age­ment areas that make up IT-CMF are related, as well as reveal­ing the paths that can be cov­ered by the orga­ni­za­tion, to improve its use of IST. The pos­si­bil­i­ties for com­bin­ing the graph con­cept with the frame­work are numer­ous, and it is believed that suf­fi­cient guide­lines have been pro­vided in this paper to sug­gest how man­agers can build the best roadmap to be fol­lowed, deploy­ing orga­ni­za­tional resources as effi­ciently and effec­tively as pos­si­ble, focus­ing on the cre­ation of aggre­gate value to the busi­ness by using IST. To this end, it is essen­tial to iden­tify the orga­ni­za­tion’s strengths and weak­nesses, relat­ing them to strate­gic objec­tives, so that the appli­ca­tion of resources in the desired improve­ment is as effi­cient as pos­si­ble.

The evo­lu­tion­ary path to be defined involves sev­eral planned out­comes, in addi­tion to the use of resources and actions by the man­agers. Although there are numer­ous pos­si­ble evo­lu­tion­ary paths sug­gested by the appli­ca­tion of Graph The­ory to IT-CMF, man­agers are required to con­sider and detail such out­comes, resources, and actions fore­seen for the evo­lu­tion­ary path, tak­ing into account the prac­tices sug­gested by IT-CMF. This will help to reduce uncer­tainty and even­tual sur­prises result­ing from super­fi­cial ana­lyzes of the orga­ni­za­tion.

For future work, we con­sider the appli­ca­tion of this pro­posal in dif­fer­ent orga­ni­za­tions to be extremely rel­e­vant. This would assist in the val­i­da­tion of the pro­posal of using Graph The­ory for plan­ning improve­ment actions to be car­ried out based on the IT-CMF. We also con­sider valu­able to involve pro­fes­sion­als to clas­sify the impor­tance of con­tri­bu­tions between the CCs, result­ing from the improve­ment actions in each one. The result of this clas­si­fi­ca­tion will help to define weights for the edges of the graphs rep­re­sent­ing IT-CMF. If such a weighted graph is avail­able, the def­i­n­i­tion of an evo­lu­tion­ary path should result facil­i­tated, per­haps being fea­si­ble the appli­ca­tion of graph short­est path algo­rithms that may take advan­tage of those weights to find the most sus­tain­able and fruit­ful improve­ment actions in CCs.

Acknowledgment

This work has been sup­ported by FCT—Fun­dação para a Ciên­cia e Tec­nolo­gia within R&D Units Pro­ject Scope: UIDB/00319/2020.

References

• Bar­ney, J. (1991). Firm Resources and Sus­tained Com­pet­i­tive Advan­tage. Jour­nal of Man­age­ment 17(3), 99–120.

  Bondy, J. A. and U. S. R. Murty (1976). Graph The­ory with Appli­ca­tions. Ontario: Macmil­lan.

  Busi­ness Dic­tio­nary (2012). Evo­lu­tion. Avail­able at: http://www.busi­ness­dic­tionary.com/def­i­n­i­tion/evo­lu­tion.html (Accessed: 15 August 2019).

  Car­cary, M., E. Doherty and C. Thorn­ley (2015). Busi­ness inno­va­tion and dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion: Matur­ing the IT capa­bil­ity. IT Pro­fes­sional 17(2), 46–53.

  Cur­ley, M. (2008). The IT Capa­bil­ity Matu­rity Frame­works. National Uni­ver­sity of Ire­land.

  Cur­ley, M. and J. Ken­neally (2011). Using the IT Capa­bil­ity Matu­rity Frame­work to Improve IT Capa­bil­ity and Value Cre­ation: An Intel IT Case Study. Pro­ceed­ings of the Inter­na­tional Enter­prise Dis­trib­uted Object Com­put­ing Con­fer­ence. Helsinki, 107–115.

  Duarte, A. and M. M. da Silva (2013). Cloud Matu­rity Model. Pro­ceed­ings of the 2013 IEEE Sixth Inter­na­tional Con­fer­ence on Cloud Com­put­ing. Santa Clara (Cal­i­for­nia), 606–613.

  Flamholtz, E. G. and Z. Akse­hirli (2000). Orga­ni­za­tional suc­cess and fail­ure: An Empir­i­cal Test of a Holis­tic Model. Euro­pean Man­age­ment Jour­nal 18(5), 488–498.

  Fong, K. (2010). The Five Ele­ments of Orga­ni­za­tional Suc­cess. Avail­able at: http://ele­men­tal­part­ners.net/down­loads/5_Ele­ments.pdf (Accessed: 20 Octo­ber 2019).

  Gib­son, C. F. and R. L. Nolan (1974). Man­ag­ing the four stages of EDP growth. Har­vard Busi­ness Review 52, 76–88.

  Gold­barg, M. and G. Gold­barg (2012). Grafos: Con­ceitos, Algo­rit­mos e Apli­cações. Rio de Janeiro: Else­vier.

  Gross, J. and J. Yellen (2003). Hand­book of Graph The­ory. New York: CRC.

  Hamel, G. and C. K. Pra­ha­lad (1994). Com­pet­ing for the future. Boston, Mass­a­chus­sets: Har­vard Busi­ness School Press.

  IVI (2016). IT Capa­bil­ity Matu­rity Frame­work (IT-CMF)—The Body of Knowl­edge Guide. Maynooth: Inno­va­tion Value Insti­tute.

  Kaplan, R. S. and D. P. Nor­ton (1992). The Bal­anced Score­card—Mea­sures that Drive Per­for­mance. Har­vard Busi­ness Review 70(1), 71–79.

  Neely, A., M. Gre­gory and K. Platts (2005). Per­for­mance mea­sure­ment sys­tem design: A lit­er­a­ture review and research agenda. Inter­na­tional Jour­nal of Oper­a­tions & Pro­duc­tion Man­age­ment 25(12), 1228–1263.

  Nolan, R. L. (1973). Man­ag­ing the com­puter resource: a stage hypoth­e­sis. Com­mu­ni­ca­tions of the ACM 16(7), 399–405.

  Nolan, R. L. (1979). Man­ag­ing the crises in data pro­cess­ing. Har­vard Busi­ness Review 57(2), 115–125.

  Pep­pard, J. and J. Ward (2004). Beyond strate­gic infor­ma­tion sys­tems: towards an IS capa­bil­ity. The Jour­nal of Strate­gic Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems 13(2), 167–194.

  San­tos, J. R. and C. Valdesuso (1985). Plane­ja­mento Estratégico e Tático da Infor­mática, sec­ond edi­tion. Rio de Janeiro: SCI-Edi­tora.

  Sink, D. S. (1985). Pro­duc­tiv­ity Man­age­ment: Plan­ning, Mea­sure­ment and Eval­u­a­tion, Con­trol and Improve­ment. New York: Wiley.

Appendix A—List of Critical Capabilities